"We would like to clarify that the proceeding grants immunity from prosecution for tax offenses only and does not affect the obligation of the financial institutions to fulfill the obligations imposed on them by virtue of the Prohibition of Money Laundering Law, 5760-2000 and the orders issued by virtue thereof. Therefore, when funds are transferred or deposited in a financial institution as part of a voluntary disclosure procedure, the financial institution must fulfill all the obligations imposed on it, including identifying the recipient of the service, identifying the beneficiary of the account, clarifying the source of the funds, and reporting to the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prohibition Authority in appropriate cases, all in accordance with that institution's risk management policy. The fact that these are funds or property that were declared to the Tax Authority as part of a voluntary disclosure process does not affect the financial institution's obligation to ascertain the source of the funds and to examine whether this is an action that involves a concern of money laundering or terrorist financing.""
In continuation of these words, I will only say that I agree with the words of the Honorable Justice Daoud regarding the need to adopt the Authority's position on this matter wholeheartedly.
- In view of the aforesaid, the plaintiff's referral to the FATF rules, according to which it is possible to allow banks to receive funds if they are not funds that originate in an offense that is not a tax offense, while ensuring that a tax waiver does not constitute a means of laundering money from more serious offenses, does not benefit from the simple reason mentioned above – that the tax offense is not the only suspicion in the case at hand, and thus it is sufficient to make this provision irrelevant to our case.
I will note, as the defendant's counsel rightly commented in his summaries, that in any event this provision in itself cannot prevail over the internal law that applies in the State of Israel, and the applicable law was brought above.
- Another point that deserves to be emphasized in this case is the fact that we are dealing with a customer who wishes to open a new account, and with regard to this, the Supreme Court has already ruled (Civil Appeal 4432/21 Mercantile Discount Bank, Kfar Yasif Branch v. Suleiman Suleiman (April 7, 2022), paragraph 13):
"In the case law of the trial courts, a proper distinction was made between a refusal to open a bank account in the first place and a refusal to continue to provide banking service after the account has already been opened (in the spirit of the customary distinction in administrative law between refusal to grant a license and the cancellation of a license. ...). With respect to a decision of the second type, particularly weighty reasons will be required to justify closing the account, and therefore reasons that may justify refusing to open an account in the first place may turn out to be insufficient to justify closing it retroactively."